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23 September, 2011

Wildflower Wednesday in September

I was early for Gail's Wildflower-Wednesday. Last week the flowers were foreign, today they are Proudly South African. Perhaps
the spirit of WFW is more about the wildflowers that would grow in my garden,
if nature decided. Yellow Oxalis. White
rain daisies on otherwise bare earth. In the damp hollows Melianthus and arum lilies. Where the winter rain leaves a few
inches of standing water, vlei lilies.

Most of my bulbs were grown from seed. Fairy
bells of Melasphaerula. White Babiana inherited from the previous
gardener. Vlei lilies, seed didn’t work, so I bought bulbs with delight, when I
found them. Arum lily snuck in with a Strelitzia.
Freesia alba once from seed, now self-sown. Dietes some inherited, some from seed, some as bulbs – but somehow,
they are all the same species.

Melasphaerula, Babiana, vlei lily
arum, Freesia alba, Dietes

Chasmanthe should be yellow, but the orange
bobs up. Oxalis to strike fear in the
heart of Californian gardeners, this has seeded in the crook of the ash tree,
and waves its flowers in my face! The orange Clivia sulks and dwindles; the yellow threatens to burst out of its
pot. Ifafa lilies flower on.

Chasmanthe, OxalisClivia, Ifafa lily

The first of the scabious with masses of buds
poised fatly. Plectranthus neochilus with
architectural spires at ankle height. Melianthus
up high, with birds bickering over nectar. Solitary Dianthus (sorry, that's what you get when you schedule posts ahead - Dianthus is NOT one of our wildflowers!)

Scabious, Plectranthus neochilusMelianthus, Dianthus

On the Karoo Koppie, the winter aloes are
stalks with seeds. Now the highest flowers are Euphorbia mauretanica a cushion of lime gold. Cotyledon orbiculata blooms on. We have tangerine and lemon Bulbinella. And the vygies begin, the taller shrubby Lampranthus and The Others (not good at IDing succulents).

I don’t do annuals, but I do do shrubs. One of
the Podalyria calyptrata had a hidden
label ‘white’ and so it is. The Buddleja sends
out swoons of fragrance. Jasmine is fragrant if you get up close and personal. Knoffel buchu, with its garlic leaves.

Podalyria calyptrata, Buddleja
Jasmine, knoffel buchu

Podalyria calyptrata in the gentle sweetpea colours I
expected. Pink bells of Dombeya hanging
down, and needing to be uplifted for the camera. Hazy soft mauve wild sage. The
only survivor of the fynbos garden I
tried, Erica baccans, berry heath for
the shape of the little flowers.

These daisies are all Proudly South African. Kingfisher
blue Felicia, this one with green and
white leaves. Cream and yellow Gazania. Dimorphotheca in deepest
purple and gentlest yellow (also pink and white).

Diana, I have to echo Town Mouse. Why on earth would anyone bother to look beyond the meadow next door for the plants for their garden!

I must say, I adore freesia. It was one of my wedding flowers! I love the fragrance of the freesia we get here, and my hubby used to buy me bouquets of it when we were engaged. It's too tender to grow here, other than as an annual, but every now and again, we do!

Such a wonderfully informative post! Thanks so much for sharing so much about your native plants.

thanks for stopping by my blog too, your blog is very interesting, with such beautiful pics. I use to love planting when I was small, but haven't done so in a long time. I really want to pic it back sometime in the future.

Diana, I can't believe I'm this far behind on reading your blog. I always enjoy seeing all the wonderful native plants in your garden. This time, I was smitten with Clerodendron,a plant I had never heard of before; it's blue butterfly flowers are wonderful. -Jean